First Street Yoga - Newberg, Oregon

This week (2/20), I’ll be teaching restorative poses in all my classes, and Alison will teach restoratives next week. For those of you who are new to the practice, restorative poses are the passive poses of relaxation. Depending on the position, they might offer a lot of stretch, but they require minimal physical effort.

When I was a beginner, they weren’t my favorite poses. If I did get stuck in a restorative practice I felt restless and impatient. Restorative poses were easy to do; why bother practicing them? One day, struggling with this, a voice in my head finally asked me: “if these poses are too easy, why are they so hard to practice?” I’ve been exploring that interesting question ever since.

It takes at least 10 minutes of release for the body to really relax. My bossy mind was so convinced of its own importance that it could not, at first, see the value in any pursuit that didn’t actively require its skills. Patience was my first lesson. When my mind finally began to settle down, I got to experience the physical benefits of restorative poses. When we relax deeply, we support all those things we do without thinking about them – digestion, respiration and circulation, fighting disease, cleansing the body. This support balances the nervous system and clears away the many negative effects of stress.

We invite you to come in and unwind. Whatever else is going on in your life, give yourself an hour and a half to set your burdens down. Come in and see what happens when easy is your teacher.

Most of us have had the experience of driving a car when the tires are not quite balanced. It takes more work – to hold the car steady in its lane, to corner and to change speeds. Our bodies are just the same. We function best when we are symmetrical, but life works against symmetry. Right-handed or left-handed, how we work and how we play, these factors tend to develop muscles unevenly. When we’re out of balance we’re just like that unbalanced car; extra effort must go to keeping on track. The practice of yoga is an individual practice of figuring out and correcting our asymmetries. Strength and flexibility are balanced to create the greatest freedom of movement possible.

Yoga myths

You must be flexible to practice yoga. Strength and flexibility are like the flip sides of a coin; the stronger you are, the less flexible you are liable to be. Yoga works to balance these qualities in all the poses. We use props like chairs and blankets to support ourselves on this journey. Yoga gradually encourages flexibility by releasing tense muscles to allow greater range of motion, while training muscles to be strong even in extended positions.

Yoga is good for improving stress and flexibility but it’s not real exercise. When we move quickly from pose to pose, yoga practice can be quite aerobic. Most of the time, especially for beginners, yoga asana is more like weight training – but the weight you bear is your own. Moving in and out of the poses as well as the isometric tension of holding poses work to build muscle. When we strengthen a muscle in a lengthening position (the opposite of crunching contractions) the muscle is less visible but more active metabolically (will burn more calories when at rest). Unlike weight machines, yoga doesn’t target specific muscles. Instead, it aims toward best function. You’ll discover muscles you never knew you had!

Yoga truths

Yoga is an excellent cross-training for most sports. Because yoga practice works to create a balanced body, the awareness, coordination, and strength it confers benefits all sports. Further, the emphasis on mental focus and emotional stability can be key in eliciting the best possible performance even in stressful circumstances.

Yoga is one of the best ways to improve back problems. Numerous well designed studies now confirm that alignment based yoga is one of the most effective ways to cure chronic back pain. Just like the alternatives, surgery and pain management, yoga has side effects. The side effects for yoga? Stress relief, increased feelings of well being, better breathing patterns, long term weight loss, and more.

Yoga decreases stress and improves concentration. While we work physically, we keep the mind focused on our immediate experience. This simple focus becomes a meditation that improves concentration and teaches tools for managing stress.

Interested? Join John Thursday evenings at our Introductory Course (For Men) and experience these yoga truths for yourself.

Good! The sensitive and complex foot suffers when it is confined to shoes and to the smooth surfaces of floors and roads. Let your toes explore the grass, the sand and sea. It’s a simple but effective way to expand your horizons and improve your health.

Here is my favorite sequence to strengthen and coordinate the feet, ankles, knees and hips (first learned from Patricia Walden). In this vinyasan, move fluidly from position to position.

Tadasana
Urdhva hastasana
Utkatasana
Malasana (upright squat)
Heels up, balance on toes, squat
Kneeling, toes curled under

And reverse to go back to tadasana and begin again.

Practice tips: look poses up in your favorite book or at www.yogajournal.com;
keep your weight in your heels (stand with heels on a blanket if necessary);
stay firm at the waist to maintain balance throughout.

Now strengthen feet and ankles by balancing in Vrksasana (tree pose). Let your newly energized feet be the roots, reaching downward!

After twelve years of working out at the gym, a student recently told me, she can finally use an exercise machine she’s been trying to master. It wasn’t the twelve years of working out, she explained laughing, but the single year of yoga that made the difference. How does yoga do that?

As we struggle to learn the yoga exercises (called asana) we begin to understand that our strengths and weaknesses are so connected they are like flip sides of a single coin. Often, lack of strength is not due to simple weakness (twelve years of working out will improve simple weakness). When we can’t do something that we’ve been trying to master for a long time, it’s usually because something else in us is undermining our efforts. One step up and two steps back.

Muscles in the body are often paired. When one contracts, the other should release to allow movement. One muscle may be very strong but if its antagonist muscle is weak by comparison, the joint will not move well. For healthy movement, coordination trumps brute strength.

The same need for balanced effort is apparent in life as well as in our bodies. For example, an ambitious personality may be good at identifying and moving toward goals but if the skills of focus and determination are not balanced by an equally robust ability to relax and enjoy, they may miss the satisfaction that should come from the achievement.

Yoga asanas are designed to balance the physical body. The equal emphasis on effort and relaxation helps us balance mentally and emotionally as well.

In yoga class, every student may be doing the same asana, but we’re all developing different skills as each individual investigates what they need to be better balanced. Then, almost like magic, the hard things get easier and the easy things get more interesting. You may find yourself wondering why it took so long.

Yoga May Help Cancer Patients’ Fatigue, Insomnia After Treatment

By PAMELA MAZZEO, M.D.
ABC News Medical Unit

May 21, 2010

In the chemotherapy infusion room at the Staten Island University Hospital sit several cancer patients hooked up to IVs. But they aren’t leafing through magazines or staring at a talk show and worrying about their health.

Instead, their right legs are lifted up in the air, and they’re circling their ankles clockwise while breathing deeply under the instruction of their yoga teacher.

“Most people don’t look forward to chemotherapy,” said Kerry Gillespie, director of the hospital’s Center for Complementary Medicine. But he said the patients in this program look forward to the yoga class they take during their chemotherapy infusions every continue reading »